Earlier this year in February OpenAI introduced a pre-release of their video-making artificial intelligence (AI) called Sora for selected test users.
Sora can make real-looking videos from text. See OpenAI's technical report released in February and the new Sora system card for specifications.
Now OpenAI is rolling out Sora at sora.com.
The company launched Sora Turbo, a fast version of Sora for ChatGPT Plus and Pro users. Sora Turbo is quicker than the first Sora we saw in February.
With Sora Turbo, you can make videos in high definition, up to 20 seconds long, in different shapes like wide or square. You can use your own pictures or videos to make new content or mix them with Sora's creations. There's a new tool called a storyboard where you can set what happens in each video frame. There are also feeds to see what the community is making.
Sora Turbo isn't perfect. It can mess up physics in videos and has trouble with long, complex scenes. It's included in Plus accounts for free, letting you make 50 videos monthly at lower resolution or fewer at higher quality. Pro users get more videos, higher resolution, and longer video times. OPenAI is working on different pricing plans for next year.
An OpenAI press release says that this release is about letting people get creative with video, tell stories, and see what new things they can do with AI video making.
Generative AI for video: possible issues
Sora adds metadata to videos, which shows that Sora made them. This helps with transparency and checking where videos come from. There are safety measures like watermarks and a tool to see if content is from Sora.
MIT Technology Review warns (unpaywalled version) of possible problems like deepfakes and the energy consumption of generative AI for video, and points out that Sora will be available to OpenAI users with premium plans, either ChatGPT Plus ($20 per month) or ChatGPT Pro ($200 per month). However, "OpenAI is starting its global launch of Sora today, but it will take longer to launch in 'most of Europe.'"